Confused about my mobile identity

I’ve been struggling with my mobile identity. Over the past week I’ve got the Nokia 8850 and the Sony CMD-Z5, both proper ‘phones’. They don’t have any nonsense on them. They ring, you answer, you transact business. You get a text message, you read it, you knock out a reply. Done.

The challenge I’ve been having is then swapping back to my ‘normal’ N90 which I’ve been using as my primary handset for months and months — ever since my kind younger brother disguarded it as old hat and too big to carry around (He was on a Motorola V3x and is now on a K800i which is gorgeous). The problem with the N90 is that it ‘does everything’ and it’s totally huge.

It’s a little slow when it comes to launching text messaging. Not as slow as a Windows Mobile device, but compared to the CMD-Z5 or the Nokia 8850, it takes eons to open the inbox. It’s also slightly overwrought with features that… well… I don’t know, I think it’s possibly interfering with my business communications. For example if I mistakenly twist the screen whilst using it as a phone, that activates the camera/video and we’re away, with menus and options popping up everywhere.

This is hardly a huge issue, but it’s been weighing on me recently and necessitating attention. My primary communications device is the N90 and then my secondary device is the Blackberry. This is a little skewed you see. I think this is what’s been causing the issues. The Blackberry is useful for me to respond to email in real time — a lot of my business operates in this manner. I start confusing people if I knock them off a text message from the Blackberry because it’s got a different number. So I need to put that down, pick up the N90 and send the text with that, then pick up the Blackberry again and read some more email.

Talking with Sutha of Nakama over the Blackberry recently, I’ve been discussing the problem. He explained that he suffered from similar issues and:

I always have my BlackBerry 8700 as my primary phone, but then have a second SIM that ends up being put in whatever cameraphone du jour I get thrown.

That’s the way ahead for me.

I think this makes far more sense. I want an N90 or similar with me because thoroughly enjoy taking pictures and video of stuff when I’m out and about. Further, I want those pictures to be of sufficient quality and the video to be decent enough to send to people. Obviously the Blackberry won’t be anywhere near this level for some years to come ergo I will need to carry a second device — my ‘cameraphone du jour’ — to meet my requirements. So there we have it.

I’m about to activate Blackberry service on my primary T-Mobile SIM, remove the unlimited data add-on and increase the minutes (I was NAILED yet again for 36p a minute for going over my allotted minutes). Then I’m going to add the unlimited data to my secondary T-Mobile sim, remove the Blackberry service and, I think I’ll probably keep that service plan on it’s 1,000 off-peak minutes.